Sunday, May 27, 2012

This summer the city’s Department of Transportation inaugurates a new
bike-share program. People who live and work in New York will be able to
travel quickly and cheaply between many neighborhoods. This is major.
It will make New Yorkers rethink their city and rewrite the mental maps
we use to decide what is convenient, what is possible. Parks,
restaurants and friends who once seemed beyond plausible commuting
distance on public transportation will seem a lot closer. The
possibilities aren’t limitless, but the change will be pretty
impressive. I’ve used a bike to get around New York for decades. There’s an
exhilaration you get from self-propelled transportation — skateboarding,
in-line skating and walking as well as biking; New York has good public
transportation, but you just don’t get the kind of rush I’m talking
about on a bus or subway train. I got hooked on biking because it’s a
pleasure, not because biking lowers my carbon footprint, improves my
health or brings me into contact with different parts of the city and
new adventures. But it does all these things, too — and sometimes makes
us a little self-satisfied for it; still, the reward is emotional
gratification, which trumps reason, as it often does. David Byrne is an artist and musician; he wrote this article in the NYT.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

It was a warm April morning in downtown Los Angeles, and there was not a
car on the road. For five hours, the streets were commandeered by
nearly 100,000 people on bicycles — old and young, wearing spandex and
silly hats, dogs and babies perched on handlebar baskets — in a
celebration that produced a sight that once would have seemed
inconceivable in this city of cars. It was the fourth time this city closed its streets for the event known as CicLAvia, and it was the largest one yet. In the past 18 months, close to 40 miles of bike paths and lanes have been created across the city and the City Council passed a measure
to prevent bicyclists from being harassed by motorists. On one recent evening, drivers came to a (mostly) uncomplaining stop as
swarm after swarm of cyclists breezed through an intersection on
Wilshire Boulevard, complete with a police escort. And on Tuesday, there
was a “Blessing of the Bicyclists” — with a rabbi, a water-sprinkling
priest and bikers in attendance — at Good Samaritan Hospital. Bicycling is no longer the purview of downtown messengers or kamikaze
daredevils. Its advocates include hipsters who frequent the bicycle
repair cooperative known as the Bicycle Kitchen.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Could pedal power be the
answer for companies struggling to deliver their goods in the congested
streets of Scotland's cities? One young Edinburgh entrepreneur believes
so. Neil Bon, of Pronto Pedal Power, has turned his back on a
promising law career to run his own cargo bike business and is already
winning custom from companies which want to save time, money and reduce
pollution too. Cargo bikes, which are specially designed to carry large and
bulky items, are already a common sight in Denmark and the Netherlands. They are increasing in popularity elsewhere on the continent but are still a rarity on Scotland's streets. Mr Bon believes that could be about to change, as businesses
realise cargo bikes have important advantages over the ubiquitous white
delivery van. He told me: "It's primarily about cost. But a lot of
companies are looking to reduce their environmental impact, so it's
about that too. And, of course, we can make deliveries more quickly than
vans in the city centre."Cycle logistics. Mr Bon said cargo bike delivery riders should not be confused
with traditional cycle couriers, with a light bag of documents slung
across their backs. Continue reading the main story.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

The bike-share stations will be pliable, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has
said — their assembly so simple that, if problems arise, docks can be
removed without leaving a trace.Cars parked near the corner of 25th Street and Second
Avenue in Manhattan, where a bike-share station is planned. The first bicycles for hire are scheduled to hit the streets in late July. And yet, with the program’s first 420 proposed locations
unveiled on Friday, proponents say New York has taken a step toward a
watershed moment in the transportation history of the city: Every few
blocks throughout Midtown and Lower Manhattan, in splotches of northern
Brooklyn and along a small slice of Queens, New Yorkers will have access
to a new alternative for public travel. The stations will appear on the sidewalks of Williamsburg and near the
edge of the Hudson River, in parking lanes on Eighth Avenue and beside
the plaza along Central Park South. Bicyclists who pay an annual
membership fee of $95 will be able to shuttle between stations for up to
45 minutes without an additional charge. For bike enthusiasts, the release of the maps was long-awaited. Others
worried about the increased competition for precious car parking space.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Citigroup Inc. (C) agreed to pay $41
million to sponsor New York City’s bicycle-rental program, which
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said will be the largest such system in
the U.S. when it begins in July. The “Citi Bike” program, presented by the mayor and
Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit at City Hall
today, will offer 10,000 bikes branded with the New York-based
bank’s logo at 600 docking stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and
Long Island City, Queens. New York will share any profits
from the bike rentals with Portland, Oregon-based Alta Bicycle Share,
chosen as its operator in September. The bike-share program, first advocated by the city
Transportation Department in 2009, would provide a low-cost
transit alternative in a city where almost half the workforce
lives within five miles (eight kilometers) of its place of work,
the department said in a planning document. MasterCard Inc. (MA) CEO Ajay Banga, also at City Hall, said his
company would pay $6.5 million to provide bike-share stations
with “PayPass Tap & Go” payment points and traditional
magnetic-stripe terminals as part of its “Priceless New York”
promotion of events and attractions for residents and tourists. Similar systems exist in Paris, with 20,600 bicycles;
Barcelona, which has 6,000; Hangzhou, China, which offers as
many as 60,600, and
Washington’s 1,500-bike system. Read also NYC